Freescale (Austin, Texas) claims 45 percent of the automotive processor market with its 32-bit flash-memory microcontrollers. It shipped 30 million units in 2006, up from 2005, when it also claimed to be the world's No. 1 supplier of automotive microcontrollers.

Freescale 's Power Architecture, developed in conjunction with IBM, has evolved into a system-on-chip product for automotive electronics. It has been adopted by major auto makers like General Motors and BMW. Based on the e200 32-bit Power Architecture, Freescale's latest MPC5500 chip is made with relaxed 130-nm design rules.

The MPC5500 family includes dual-cores, variable-length encoding for program storage, Fast Ethernet as well as the FlexRay network protocol for real-time control used for auto stability, adaptive cruise control and advanced sensors.